


Burn to Shine

by NeoVenus22



Category: Power Rangers Dino Thunder
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 01:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Conner's older now, but maybe not wiser.  When he finds out some devastating news about his family, he goes to one of his closest friends for help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn to Shine

Conner had been nineteen when he'd first started drinking coffee. He remembered the exact moment: nearly having a panic attack over the midterm that was (A) worth fifty percent of his final grade, and (B) in less than twelve hours. He'd gone to Starbucks in search of quick caffeine consumption. A cute barista had gotten him to keep ordering until they'd closed, and he'd walked out of the experience with a phone number and a fierce addiction to lattes.

When he went home for break, he found with dismay that the Cyberspace didn't serve coffee. "We have enough ways to kill brain cells," Hayley had laughed. "But if you're jonesing, I know a place. Withdrawal isn't pretty."

It was an hour and a half drive from Reefside, two hours from Conner's university, run by Hayley's college roommate. "Kathy was a business major," Hayley said. "I helped her cope when her ex-boyfriend got married, and now I get free coffee when I get up here. Remember that, always be nice to your roommate."

What began as a simple trip to check the place out and score a free cup turned into a monthly ritual. They took time out of their schedules to make the drive and meet up at Perk, separated from the worlds they knew.

It wasn't the second weekend of the month when Conner called Hayley. As a matter of fact, they'd met for coffee only two Saturdays prior. But Conner needed his friend's sage council. "Hayley," he delivered the message urgently to her voicemail. "I'm going to Perk. Meet me there. It's important."

His heart nearly burst with relief when she showed up not long after. "I got your message, Conner," she said. "What's up?"

Conner was nursing a large cappuccino cup, now nearly empty, and he'd calmed somewhat from when he'd made the call. "My dad's getting remarried," he said.

Hayley sat down, her features melting into despondence. "Oh, Conner."

"Her name is... Melanie? Melissa? Marissa? Clarissa? Something stupid like that, I don't know." Hayley stared at him patiently, waiting for him to continue. "He wants me and Eric to be in the wedding. I've never even met her."

"How does Eric feel about her?"

"He's not a fan." Conner drummed his fingers on the table anxiously. "I really want to back out of this, but I don't think I can."

"Why do you want to back out?"

"Why would I want to watch my dad get married again? I mean, I'm not one of those kids who thought my parents were going to get back together or anything, but that doesn't mean I want to bear witness to this disaster." Hayley stretched out her hand, laying it over Conner's own. His fingers calmed, but she could still feel the tension radiating from his hand, the tense muscles, the blood throbbing in his veins. "I haven't even seen my dad in, like, six months, and he goes and drops this bomb on me," he continued. "So not cool." He looked up at her, darkness flashing in his eyes. "I don't think he's invited Mom."

"I'm so sorry," sighed Hayley, and without thinking, she turned Conner's hand over in her own and squeezed it tightly.

"It's messed up, Hales, is what it is."

"Have some more coffee," she said, for lack of anything else to offer.

And so he did, ordering a second cappuccino while Hayley opted for a macchiato. They sipped their drinks in silence, the warmth spilling down Conner's throat. It calmed him, but it did less to soothe his frazzled nerves than Hayley's presence did. By the time the foam sticking to the rim of his mug had hardened and shrunk, he had the confidence to inquire how Cam was.

Hayley lifted her mug to her lips, taking a swig before answering, "We broke up."

"Oh." Conner wasn't quite sure how to react to that, a mix of emotions bubbling in him. Instead of trying to sort them out, however, he opted to ask, "When?"

"Three months ago." She met his eyes.

"Hayley, why didn't you say anything?" They met dutifully every month, which meant at least two instances where it would have been a relevant topic of conversation, yet it hadn't come up.

"It's business," she said. "We don't talk about business." 'Business' meaning, as Conner referred to it, 'the Ranger thing.' And they didn't. They didn't talk about their team, or about the caped crusaders prancing around a neighboring borough. Hayley never mentioned tech. Conner even refrained from wearing red. 'Business' was the reason they knew each other in the first place, but their relationship had long since progressed beyond that. Instead, Conner asked for advice on scholastic matters, and Hayley regaled him with stories about customers. They of course discussed Ethan, Kira, Trent, and Tommy, but even that waited until they'd crossed the threshold out into the parking lot. It was as though nothing about the world that had brought them together existed inside the cozy coffeehouse.

"It's not business," he said. "It's your love life."

"You must not have known Cam very well, then," she said. "Everything is business with him. You know, some of us try to move on from the past, but he tries more and more to immerse himself in it. The distance doesn't help, much. It just gives him more excuses to let his work take over. I love Cam, but I question his competency when it comes to personal relationships."

"He was always a little prickly," Conner agreed carefully. It was a safe enough statement to make, announcing what was common knowledge rather than stressing an opinion. Even if they were one and the same.

"Can we not talk about it, please?" said Hayley.

"I'd much rather we did," Conner said. "Have you talked about this with anyone? Does anyone even know? Tommy?"

"If he knows, he hasn't said anything. It's not like he'd be able to tell the difference, anyway. Cam and I broken up spend about as much time together as Cam and I as a couple."

"But you're not bitter," said Conner flatly.

Hayley met his eyes with a withering look, which Conner met for an impressive ten seconds before they both burst into laughter. As laughter went, it was one of the sadder variations, the helpless sort between two miserable friends. But the important thing was that either of them had friends they could laugh with.

"It's done," she said. "It was fun while it lasted, for the most part. At least I can still call him my friend. Not to mention an excellent resource."

"That's what I look for in the people I'm dating," said Conner. "Whether or not I can use them as a 'resource.' I like to put it on my resume."

"It certainly qualifies as 'work experience,'" she agreed.

"Also," he continued, feeling a surge of maliciousness, "whether or not their friends have blown me up recently."

Hayley giggled slightly, though from her expression, it was safe to say she didn't mean to. "Conner, that was several years ago. Forgive and forget."

"A joke, Hayley. The guy broke your heart; I'm just trying to help cobble the pieces together."

"I appreciate the effort, but my heart's not broken."

"Maimed?"

"Not so much."

"You sure? I mean, I'm offering to kick his ass here. You could at least be a little damaged. Scratched, maybe."

She smiled indulgently. "He's a heavily-trained samurai, last in a lineage that is steeped in ancient martial arts. You haven't even taken one official karate class."

"I could run him over," suggested Conner, undeterred.

"Why are you so insistent on talking about my problems?"

He shrugged, the bleak cheerfulness of the moment having faded away. "It's easier than talking about mine."

Hayley took her time composing her next sentence, not wanting to offend him. "It would make your dad happy."

"Why should I care about making him happy?" said Conner sourly. "When was the last time he cared about making me happy? Or any of us? He left. He packed up his junk and left Mom without so much as a goodbye. Now he's engaged to some Harbor whore."

Hayley made a face at his word choice, but she didn't comment or chastise. Her job to try and find a silver lining to calm him down. "It's not as bad as all that, though. Isn't your relationship with Eric that much better now than it was when you lived together?"

Instead of cheering Conner up, as she'd expected, he only seemed to curl more into himself. It was a very un-Conner-like gesture, one that caught her by surprise, and served to alter her perception of the world as she'd known it until this point.

"How screwed up am I," said Conner, "that I can't even get along with my own twin brother until after he moves three hours away?" When he looked up at her, an entirely different Conner was peering out from behind his eyes. "Dad left because of me, you know. He left because I was a fuck-up. I didn't care about anyone but myself. Not him, not Mom, not even Eric. All I wanted was to be the best, and it didn't matter who I ran over in the process."

Hayley's heart broke, seeing Conner as the little boy he hadn't been for years. Maybe the boy he'd never been. She scooted her chair over next to his, wrapped her arms around him, lay her head on his shoulder. "I promise you, Conner, it's not like that." Those were the last words spoken for several minutes. They sat in brooding silence until finally Conner shifted.

Hayley sat up, releasing him, and was stunned when he leaned over to kiss her cheek. "Thanks, Hayley," he said. "You're... you're great." He grinned at her gratefully, and she was glad to see that the shadows in his eyes had faded, and he seemed to be returning to normal.

Their moment had served to drain the misery out of them, and the mood was more relaxed. They rewarded themselves to slices of the house specialty, chocolate chip banana bread. Digging into her treat, Hayley was slammed with a strange memory of the Cyberspace's delivery man, and how he'd come by last week with a shipment of fruit and his fly down.

"I don't know him well enough to be able to tell him without it seeming weird," she confessed, giggling. "I mean, I could tell you or Tommy. Not without a straight face, mind you, but I could. With him, I couldn't maintain a straight face, _or_ even manage to tell him. I just kept focusing at a spot somewhere over the top of his head, laughing like a crazy person every five seconds." Conner snorted into his snack. "His shirttail was hanging out the front, too," she continued. "I thought I was going to lose it. I'm sure he thought I already had."

"You should've written something on the menu," he suggested. "'Today's Special: XYZ.'"

Hayley spluttered the sip of water she'd just taken, and when she finished nearly choking, she pounded the tabletop in hysterics.

"You are the only respectable adult I know that still laughs at zipper jokes," Conner commented.

"Who says I'm respectable?" she teased.

"Well, you've been running your own business since you were twenty-two, for starters," he said. "You're a computer genius, you help tutor wayward high school students," he thumbed at himself with a wink, "and not to mention, you helped save the world. Plus, you remained totally hot through all of that. No easy feat, let me tell you." He smiled benignly.

"I did learn from the master," she said, poking his shoulder.

"Hey, this masterpiece took years of hard work to complete."

"You certainly spent enough time working on it."

"And did you ever hear anyone complain?" he retorted.

A knowing smile crossed Hayley's lips. "That's true." She was about to say more when a shadow fell over their table, one of the waitresses.

"Hi guys," she said with a grim and apologetic smile. "Listen, I hate to do this. I normally wouldn't, but... I know you're Kathy's friends and all, so I hope you'll understand. You guys have been here for ages, and we're really busy, and we sorta need the space..." She winced. "Do you mind..?"

"Not at all," said Conner, turning up the wattage on his return smile. "We're sorry for the hold up," he continued, buying time while Hayley gathered her purse, and he went so far as to leave an extraneous tip.

They walked out to the parking lot, oddly surprised that the temperature had lowered when the sun had set. A slight breeze whipped Hayley's hair, and she smoothed it down before tucking her jacket closer around her body.

"You okay?" Conner asked.

Her eyes were narrowed when she glanced at him. "I'm fine," she said, and it wasn't the cold that was clipping her voice.

Conner raised his hands in a don't-shoot gesture. "Okay, sure." Hayley sighed elaborately in response, and though he figured he was probably digging his own grave, he took the bait. "What's wrong?"

"Conner, really. Why did you call me here?" she said. "It's not our weekend."

"I wanted to talk," he said. "I told you that."

"Why couldn't you call Kira or Ethan? They're not that far, either."

"Because," he said. "I wanted to talk to _you_. Ethan's parents have been happily married for thirty years; he'd be no help. Kira would tell me to tell Dad to screw off. You would actually offer me perspective and decent, helpful advice. I wasn't aware that you didn't do that sort of thing anymore." He crossed his arms over his chest. "Are you mad at me?"

"I'm not _mad_ at you," she scoffed.

"No, I think you are. That's new. I don't think you've ever been mad at me before."

"I'm sure it's come up."

"Seriously, what did I do? Usually Kira or Ethan tell me right away, instead of letting me stew in worry."

"You've never worried about anything in your life."

"Hayley!"

She exhaled, forcefully, as if she believed the act of doing so might somehow cleanse the world of all sins. "Conner, you have a tendency to make the person you're with feel like the only person in the cosmos, and sometimes, that can be a bit much to take."

"Why's that?" he asked quietly, neither defending nor exonerating himself.

"Because eventually, that illusion has to shatter, and when someone sees you showering another person with the exact same amount of attention, it makes them wonder just how much you care about any given individual."

Conner blinked soundlessly at her, but Hayley appeared to have exhausted all words.

They stood in the parking lot, engaged in a good old-fashioned school ground staring contest, when Conner blurted, "Come with me."

"Where?"

"To the wedding. Come with me to the wedding."

"Conner, if you think you're making things better, you're really not."

"Hey, you want me to go so badly, you'd better make sure you're there so I behave myself."

"I don't know your dad," she said. Her voice took on a certain tone of helplessness.

"That's fine. I don't know my new stepmom. It all balances out."

"This isn't a good idea." Hayley had crossed her arms over her chest now, and was unable to meet his gaze for more than a few seconds at a time. Yet she hadn't yet flat-out refused.

Conner stepped closer, taking her arm in his hand with unprecedented urgency. "Please, Hayley. I need you there."

She blinked at him unfathomably. "You need a warm body, you mean."

"No. I need you. You'll keep me sane. You always have." His fingertips brushed back and forth against her forearm in an unconscious gesture. "Please," he said quietly. Even though they were outside, and a wind was starting to cut, the air was thick enough that Conner couldn't quite breathe. He focused on the softness of her arm, the heat of it, the rhythm of the touch that hypnotized.

Hayley's eyes closed, and seconds later, she said, "Conner."

Although her voice should've done anything but, Conner found the moment shattering around him. Abruptly he stepped back. "I'm sorry," he said, but he was no more sure what he should be sorry for than he was actually sorry. "I don't, I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry."

"No," she said, "It's okay." Hey eyes were opened again, but she didn't look at him, leading him to believe that things were not okay.

"A wedding date is a big deal," she said, deliberately, choosing her words with care. "Why don't you ask Kira? Or one of your classmates? I'm sure any woman in her right mind would want to go with you."

"Then why don't you?" he demanded. "What is it about me that you seem to find so toxic?"

She didn't answer, which was a relief, because Conner suddenly found that he was in a position where he didn't think he'd be able to stomach a laundry list of his faults as delivered by Hayley.

"Listen, you're one of the most important people in my life. My lunches with you are pretty much the highlight of my entire month."

"Conner, just stop."

"Stop what?" he asked, genuinely confused.

"Stop being Conner and trying to charm me. I don't know what happened back there, but I'm getting the distinct impression that you asking me to this wedding isn't as innocent as you're making it appear."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means you've been behaving weirdly ever since I told you that Cam and I broke up. I don't know what you're thinking, but you should stop thinking it."

"I'm not thinking _anything_," he insisted. "One of my best friends broke up with her boyfriend, I'm trying to console her. My dad's getting remarried, and I want a friend to come with me so I don't lose my mind. How is that being weird?"

Hayley sighed, backing against her car and letting the metal's coolness seep through the back of her shirt, as if the lowering of her core temperature would help make her thoughts more coherent. "I don't know," she confessed.

"I'm beginning to think that maybe you're reading too much into my actions," he countered, "and I'm wondering why."

"Because I'm concerned that you're interested in me," she said.

Conner reeled. Bringing any voice to the moment that they'd been submerged in minutes ago seemed unthinkable, as if the existence of the moment was an even deeper secret than the one that had brought him and Hayley together in the first place. Talking about it made it seem real, and he wasn't sure how comfortable he was with it being real.

"Did you ever consider that you only think that because actually, _you're_ interested in _me_?" he said.

Hayley scoffed. "Yeah, right."

"What do you mean, 'yeah right'?" he demanded angrily. "Again I ask, what exactly is wrong with me."

"You're cocky to a fault, for starters," she said. "And actually, everything that is wrong with you pretty much stems from that. You're pretty, so you think that gives you license to get away with everything, including attempted seduction of me."

"I wasn't attempting to do anything," he said, a mixture of humiliation and anger rising up his throat in the form of a suffocating heat that made it impossible to get words out. "I was just..."

"Just what?"

Conner didn't want to fight. If he was looking for a pointless butting of heads, he would have called Kira. At least at the end of that, he knew he could walk out with his dignity and Kira's friendship still. But here, he was afraid that the wrong words would cause Hayley to walk out of his life. And that was unfathomable. "A lot has changed since we met," he said, abandoning all hope.

"I know that. I respect that. But at the same time, I don't think things have changed that much that either of us should be getting any ideas about each other."

"I wasn't trying to seduce you," he said, the words a bit more biting than he would have liked. He backpedaled quickly, "That isn't to say that I _wouldn't_ ever, I mean, I find you very attractive, and I like you tons, it's just that..." Judging from her expression, he had gone too far in the opposite direction. He fumbled desperately for middle ground. "I mean. Oh, crap, I don't know _what_ I mean anymore. Tell me what to say. Just tell me what to say, so I can say it, and we can go home."

"Were you asking me to the wedding as a date?"

"Yes," he said. "I didn't mean to, but when I thought about it..." He swallowed, licked his lips, and dared to meet her eyes. "Would it be a horrible thing if we went on a date? Hell, we can get coffee while we're there, to make the transition easier."

"I'm so much older than you," she sighed.

"Oh, by a couple of years, big deal. That sort of thing doesn't mean anything when you're adults. My dad's older than my mom by about four years."

"And look how well that turned out."

"Look, Hales, I'm not asking you to marry me."

"There's still a wedding involved."

Conner was trying to curb the urge to scream. The end result was the words coming out of his mouth one bullet at a time. "Fine. Consider the invitation retracted. We'll just forget this entire day ever happened." He turned, grappling with his keys as he pulled them from his pocket.

"You don't date your friends, Conner."

"Look, Hayley, if the only chance at salvaging our relationship is wiping this day off the map, I'm fine with that. But I realized today that you're one of the most important people in my life, and I don't know what to do without you." She said nothing yet again, and he returned to unlocking his door.

"It just seems so easy."

"What?"

"Wedding anxiety is making you lonely," she theorized. "You want company, you're looking for the first warm body you can find. You're so obvious it hurts, Conner, and I'm not about to play that game with you."

"Have I ever had a problem with finding a warm body?" he retorted, barking out a harsh laugh. Instantly after, he sobered, mussing up his hair with a tired gesture. "This isn't about that. I thought you'd understand. You always took me seriously, you never treated me like a joke, I just thought... I don't know what the hell I thought." Without bothering to look at her, he got in his car and shut the door. He was just starting the engine when she rapped on the window. He thought about just driving away. Maybe by the time next month's coffee date - and he'd have to stop using that word - rolled around, he'd have gotten over his irritation and disappointment.

Of course, she might not have gotten over his rudeness. With a pained sigh, he rolled down the window, not bothering to look at her. "What."

"Fine, Conner. If it's that important to you, I'll go."

"Thanks, Hales," he said, with a liberal roll of the eyes. "Thank you for settling and deigning to go anywhere with me."

"Oh, get over yourself."

"Get over yourself! You're usually the one who stops Kira from going too far when she starts ranting about me, and now you're taking a page or six from her book. I'm not a horrible person, you know. I'd like a little credit, maybe a little respect."

"Do you think I don't respect you?" she said. "Listen, Conner. My being attracted to you comes with a lot of baggage. Like the fact that I'm coming out of a breakup, and this could mean you're a rebound guy, and I don't want to be using you."

"Using me? _I_ asked _you_ out!"

She ignored this. "Not to mention the fact that you're younger than me. Which isn't necessarily a problem, except that I've known you for a long time. Not to mention that we have the same circle of friends, and you _know_ what Tommy and Ethan are like."

"They're our friends. They'll tease the crap out of you, but then they'll get over it. I'm the one who's gonna be bearing the brunt of their torture."

"You're not the cradle-robber." Hayley's face pinched in deep thought as she tried to figure out how best to phrase what she needed to say. "You should know that I still love Cam."

"Yeah, you mentioned that earlier." Conner gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, but only a little. "You're not in love with him, though, right? You don't love him like you want to go running back to him."

"That ship has sailed," she acknowledged with a slight shake of her head.

"Then, this isn't that big of a deal. In comparison."

"Promise me you won't embarrass me in front of your family." The words were severe, but the familiar glint in her eyes indicated Conner was off the hook.

"Hell, I'm hoping they won't embarrass me in front of you." He reached over the inches of car door separating them and closed his hand over hers. "Listen, Hayley, thank you."

"This isn't..." she said. "It's a trial thing, you know. An experiment."

"I know." Let it appeal to her scientific mind, whatever worked. His ego could take the blow for a little while. Theoretically. "But thanks anyway."

Hayley sighed, but to his relief, kept her hand where it was, trapped between the cold bar of the car and his own callused fingers. "You're something else, Conner."

That was her attempt to appease him, he rationalized, to refill the gas tank of his ego. "I know," he said. "That's what people love about me." It was cocky, but it got her to smile. It was his way of promising that things weren't going to change as badly as she thought.

She cocked her head to the side, studying him intently. "I suppose they do," she said. Hayley extracted her hand from his, but just as he was starting to miss the warmth of her skin as the chilly wind started to get strong again, she was sticking her head through the car window and pecking her lips against his cheek for half of a second. "As always, Conner, it's been a very interesting afternoon." Hayley smiled a little, and it hit Conner in the gut harder than it ever had before. "I'll talk to you later?" she said.

"Yeah, sure. I promise not to call so urgently next time."

"Conner, you should realize by now that I _am_ here for you, no matter what."

"I've never stopped realizing that," he admitted with earnest.

Her lips twitched slightly. "I'll talk to you later," she repeated.

"Yeah," he said, feeling the first brush of honest, warm relief since the day had started so tragically. "Later."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sweet Addiction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/48767) by [NeoVenus22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22)




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